1930s Fashion Designers Predict How People Would Dress in the Year 2000

From 1930 to 1941, Pathetone Week­ly ran film clips that high­light­ed ‘the nov­el, the amus­ing and the strange.’ At some point dur­ing the 1930s (the exact date isn’t clear), Pathetone asked Amer­i­can design­ers to look rough­ly 70 years into the future and haz­ard a guess about how women might dress in Year 2000. Appar­ent­ly, fash­ion design­ers don’t make great futur­ists, and the designs fell rather wide of the mark — unless you want to count Lady Gaga’s wardrobe, in which case they didn’t do a half bad job. Or, for that mat­ter, the male con­nect­ed 24/7 to his phone and sundry gad­gets…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How French Artists in 1899 Envi­sioned Life in the Year 2000: Draw­ing the Future

Isaac Asimov’s 1964 Pre­dic­tions About What the World Will Look 50 Years Lat­er — in 2014

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

In 1900, Ladies’ Home Jour­nal Pub­lish­es 28 Pre­dic­tions for the Year 2000

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

« Go Back
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.